Choosing the right colors, associating materials, respecting the volumes of a room… Successful interior decoration requires knowing some basic principles. The decryption of these rules of interior design to follow to create harmonious living rooms.
Decorating your house, here is an activity that does not know the crisis. With the boom in teleworking, second homes, Airbnb accommodations, etc. there are many societal reasons that push to focus more and more on interior decoration.
Some even go so far as to take the step of changing direction to make it their profession. An attractive profession that can also, rest assured, be a hobby, a passion, on condition, however, that you follow a few basic rules…
Know the Basics Rules of Interior Design
Like any field, interior design has its rules. Rules are easy to assimilate and follow if you are willing to analyze your interior properly and if you are endowed with a touch of imagination. Because learning to decorate your house is not a dogmatic science.
If decoration has been so successful in recent years, it is also due to its great opportunity to let everyone create a unique universe, specific to their values and personality. If respect for colors, the balance of patterns and materials, and the enhancement of volumes constitute the basic rules of a successful decoration, imagination and fantasy should not desert this art of setting. home scene.
Rule # 1: Respect the Color Rule in a Room
Choosing colors for your interior is an essential step when embarking on the decoration of a house or an apartment. It is customary to fantasize a lot about their use and their combination, and for good reason, the colors immediately reveal a personality, a pronounced taste. Unfortunately, using them to decorate a living room or bedroom is not always an easy task.
The rule in decoration is that you cannot use more than three colors in a room. Three colors maximum is the guarantee of a respected harmony and consequently of an elegance that is obvious. In a room, for example, we can imagine white walls, accompanied by a Klein blue bed set and curtains supported by beige carpets and appliques.
The idea is not only not to mix too many colors but above all to mix the right colors within the same room. Nude shades are thus more appreciated in more intimate rooms because they are easy to decline.
While if we have a certain weakness for a color with a strong personality such as red or orange, we will concentrate on a beautiful piece of this color only without trying to decline it in the four corners of the room. Other rules of interior design concerning colors to know before embarking on a renovation of the premises: each room has its recommended color palette.
Rule # 2: Master Lighting to Decorate your Interior
This may seem surprising, yet lighting plays an important role in the list of rules of interior design. Just like the colors used, their presence or absence immediately sets the tone of a place. Here again, everything is only a question of balance. The lighting of a room should be pleasant without being aggressive. In short, a real challenge.
To successfully light a room, you have to observe your room. Windows, orientation, and colors present are the elements that can harm natural light and on the contrary sublimate it. In all cases, it will be necessary to rely on several sources of light for the different times of the day. The suspension will be almost inevitable.
Wall lights are recommended in addition to small spaces. Finally, auxiliary lamps such as floor lamps, decorative table lamps, or reading lamps will be welcome to gain not only in occasional lighting but also in charm. The more small lamps there are, the more the feeling of a cozy room will be enhanced.
Rule # 3: Respect & Enhance the Volumes of the Premises
The expression “to have a compass in the eye” is the best of allies when one begins to think of the arrangement of a room. Because the decoration is a matter of taste, it is also a matter of observation. Before furnishing and decorating a room, it is necessary at all costs to observe it in the smallest details to understand 1 / its volume 2 / its faults 3 / its advantages to finally consider making the three coexist without hindrance.
How to erase the faults and safeguard the advantages? With the help of good decorating ideas and good furniture, you should get there without a problem!
Priority therefore to the measurements of the premises so as not to create an overly obvious imbalance and corrupt the architecture of the room. There is no question of bringing a mini two-seater sofa into a large living room and vice versa, or of bringing a large wardrobe into a small bedroom.
The main thing is to stage furniture with a similar volume and to create airy and cozy spaces at the same time. To reach the holy grail of the cleverly decorated room, determine your daily needs in advance: no more armchairs or sofas, should a living room and a dining room coexist in the same room and do you need rugs to create spaces within the same room? A whole series of questions will guide you toward a better understanding of the places and their evolution.
Rule # 4: Choose the Right Floor and Wall Coverings
Like the colors used and the furniture selected, both floor and wall coverings play a big role in the atmosphere of a room. A parquet covering will therefore not have the same effect as a waxed concrete covering in a room. Like furniture, coverings thus define the style of the room. Some of them are easier to pair with warm styles like bohemian or Scandinavian styles. Others, on the contrary, will be more borrowed from an industrial or even design character.
Highly visual coverings like flashy paint or quirky wallpaper can set the tone of a room very well. Like a beautiful fireplace, an original door frame, or an opening to the outside, these are important details that can be likely to embody the starting support for the new decor that one wishes to create. Because interior design is like a giant puzzle.
We start with an idea, usually a material, and we will develop an environment all around by mixing different colors and materials. Elements that will create harmony in the heart of the room. This technique allows you to better visualize your future decoration, to better protect yourself, and to better create your universe.
Rule # 5: Do not Overload the Rooms
Over the years, it is normal to accumulate a host of small decorative pieces and adored furniture, however, when you start decorating rules for your home you have to take the time to select the pieces you love and leave them to flea markets online. and other sites for the resale of objects and furniture the unnecessary parts in everyday life. In short: you should not overload the rooms of the house.
By following this rule, you will gain on all fronts: in space and therefore in fluidity in the circulation within the room but also in time thanks to the cleaning and the untimely sorting that you will avoid yourself on a daily basis.
However, not overloading a room does not mean making it tasteless or ridding it of its soul. Creating a bright room that breathes and therefore makes its inhabitants and visitors want to spend time there necessarily requires a careful and personal selection of the pieces that are entitled to be exhibited there.
Rule # 6: Test Before you Start
One last tip before you start, to avoid the “decoration faux pas”, choose your samples of fabrics, curtains, materials. Position them, next to each other, in front of you in the light of day and expose them in the evening to artificial light to be able to observe the atmosphere created and thus ignore any unpleasant surprises.
And here you are, you may not be a graduate decorator or interior designer, but you know the basics of the trade from now on!